


Something Wicked

by orphan_account



Series: Fear for the Flesh [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Silent Hill
Genre: AU - Silent Hill, Canonical Character Death, Cults, Demonic Possession, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Emotionally Repressed, F/M, Friendship/Love, Insanity, Jealousy, Love/Hate, M/M, Magic Realism, Multi, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Possessive Behavior, Post-Reichenbach, Psychological Torture, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, References to Suicide, Self-Hatred, Shakespeare, Silent Hill - Freeform, Survivor Guilt, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-05-02
Updated: 2013-07-23
Packaged: 2017-11-04 17:31:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 13,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/396373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Fall, Sherlock finds himself hiding out in the sleepy tourist-trap town of Silent Hill. Mycroft has begged Sherlock not to do any detecting, as Lestrade, John, and - worst of all - Sebastian Moran are getting suspicious. But, bored out of his mind, Sherlock begins investigating Harry Mason, Travis Grady, and Dahlia Gillespie, wondering what it is they all want with a little girl, about this tall, with short black hair, and who just turned seven last month...</p><p>Meanwhile, John has become nocturnal, wandering the ghostlike London after midnight with most recent ex-girlfriend, Mary Morstan, following close behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. It is a Tale of Sound and Fury, Told by an Idiot, Signifying Nothing

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Welcome to Silent Hill](https://archiveofourown.org/works/315174) by [Cleo2010](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cleo2010/pseuds/Cleo2010). 



> I have to admit that I was inspired and helped by fellow Silent Hill enthusiast Cleo2010, and also by a friend of mine who is not yet on this website, but who is beta'ing this for me.
> 
> Cleo2010 has a magnificent Sherlock/Silent Hill fic you should read. It has all the feels. All of them.

Silent Hill was a sleepy town on the outskirts of who-the-fuck knew where. Sherlock, of course, could have easily deduced exactly where he was from the environment – cold and snowing despite the sparse, desert-like surroundings – but he hardly saw the point. Mycroft had taken him there to hide him from Sebastian Moran, Moriarty's top assassin who would have killed John without a second thought if he'd had even the slightest inclination Sherlock was still alive, and Moran had been getting far too suspicious for anybody's liking. As it was, Moran was the last of Moriarty's men Sherlock had yet to take care of, and he wasn't about to risk losing John after all he'd done to keep him alive.

Sherlock frowned at himself; he hated sentiment, and yet it happened, just like it did for The Woman. None of the lying and killing and fake deaths would have been necessary if Sherlock hadn't cared so blatantly for John.

Sherlock felt the air in his stomach (he hadn't eaten in several days, so no contents to speak of) move around uncomfortably at the mere thought of what Moriarty might have done to John if Sherlock _didn't_ care about him, or at least pretended not to. Sherlock knew the thought was completely irrational; if he didn't care about John in the first place, Moriarty would have no reason to hold him over Sherlock's head. But Sherlock knew from the past few months' emotional and psychological experiments that pretending to live in a world in which John didn't exist, in which he didn't care for or about John, was impossible; the sentimental part of his brain – damn the thing – always found a way to bring John into the world, bring him back to Sherlock and Sherlock back to him.

It was unbearable, mostly because Sherlock didn't know what it all meant. If life were like the atrocious movies and books that Molly and John's girlfriends insisted on reading, he'd hand his heart, his worries, his trust over to John who, in return, would make some ridiculous vow about never letting Sherlock down, and promise never to leave Sherlock. Sherlock knew that wasn't how things worked in real life. If John had even the slightest inkling of what Sherlock felt for him, he'd be on the next flight to the farthest place from London possible. Or at the very least, he'd be uncomfortable, and probably move out. Either way, it was more than worth it to work through the agony of lying to John (because it really did hurt; he wasn't even entirely certain he would survive the fall) and John's resulting anger thereof for Sherlock to spend just a few more days - months or years, if he was lucky, - with John before John eventually found a woman that suited him, married her, and left Baker Street forever.

Sherlock's heart clenched and he scoffed at himself again. _Sentiment._

Sherlock was sitting in the bleak hotel room Mycroft had dropped him in a week ago, quietly (because really, who was around to listen?) bemoaning his existence and the circumstances that lead him to this ridiculously 'cute' small town in America, of all places. Mycroft had called him three times today alone, but as Mycroft didn't have any information about John's well-being Sherlock ignored a good portion of what he said. Besides, Mycroft only called to beg Sherlock in a voice usually reserved for death threats to "not do anything rash, sudden, or dangerous.

"But most of all, Sherlock, don't do any detecting." And then Mycroft would hang up.

The room in which Sherlock was currently staying lacked anything he might have otherwise used to keep himself occupied: matches, a razor, the room didn't even have a bloody Bible. Sherlock was surprised (and annoyed) at how well the people of this small town cleaned up their hotel rooms. There wasn't a single trace of evidence he could decipher about the room's former occupants. Aside from common sense, which told him there must have been a former occupant, it was as though the room simply ceased to exist unless someone needed it.

It had only been two days, but to Sherlock's ever-racing mind it had already been too long, the town too quiet, and himself too ready to jump out of a window from the asphyxiating boredom. Sherlock was beginning to contemplate his choices as to how to set the hotel on fire without matches when a voice like a whisper permeated the walls. The voice sounded male, and was calling out for something – someone? – lost. A _sh_ sound, an _er_ sound, and then an _l_. Sherlock knew there was more to the name, knew that the voice he was hearing was not the one he ( _cringe_ ) wanted it to be. He cursed his sentiment again and slithered out of the window, landing at the feet of the harangued caller.

Sherlock righted himself and needlessly straightened out his plain grey street clothes. He placed his hands behind his back in a gesture that was far too formal for his frankly pedestrian clothing. "Hello," he said, licking his lips and drawing a pool of saliva into his mouth; Sherlock hated to cough when he was talking, and his voice hadn't been used in several days.

The man was looking not at but past Sherlock, as though seeing something behind him that Sherlock simply knew wasn't there. Sherlock, had he anything to fear, would have called his gaze unnerving. Instead he scanned the man's body: _brown hair on end and flaked with dust, glasses askew, beaten clothing but no scrapes or bruises, out of breath, calloused fingers with dirty under the nails, flashlight gripped tightly in right hand…bright red radio in back pocket?_ The last addition threw Sherlock off slightly. The man had obviously gotten down on hands and knees to search frantically for somebody - _a relative, most likely a child (that would explain the wear and tear on the knees of his jeans, he's been crawling under tables to look for the child)_. This child was very probably a girl; the " _sh_ ", " _er_ " and " _l_ " sounds lead Sherlock to concluded that her name was Cheryl. The man had been here for a long time now, enough to blend in with the bland, translucent scenery, so the jarringly bright presence of the radio didn't make sense. What was the radio for? It wasn't the kind of radio used to communicate with. His appearance also lead Sherlock to believe the man hadn't had any luck in trying to find his daughter - he wasn't liked amongst the few people residing in this town, then. But despite his misfortune, the man wore a most determined look - one Sherlock had not seen on a client since Irene Adler fought to retrieve her phone from him.

The man's head jerked up and he extended his right hand to reach out to Sherlock, as though afraid Sherlock was going to run away, or disappear into the air. The look was heartbreaking in that it reminded Sherlock far too much of John, of the way John held his hand up to Sherlock's pre-falling figure, as if connecting their hands could change Sherlock's mind. "Hey!" the man shouted for a halt, although Sherlock wasn't moving. "My name is Harry Mason. I'm looking for a little girl, my daughter. Have you seen her? She's about this tall…short black hair, just turned seven last month?" Without waiting for an answer from Sherlock, Harry's face went black and his gaze back to the far-away one, gazing just over Sherlock's left shoulder, the one he had before he started speaking. Sherlock leaned closer and narrowed his eyes at Harry.

"You've been looking for her for a while now, but you haven't asked for help, not seriously. Why haven't you phoned the police?" Sherlock started to circle Harry in contemplation.

Harry gasped and his hands fell up to his ears, his eyes slamming shut and his head bowing, his knees turning toward each other and his back hunching. Sherlock felt a small sense of alarm. Was this a seizure? He'd never dealt with these things before, and despite his understanding of chemistry and biology physical ailments like this were decidedly John's area. He took a step closer to Harry, whose colour had begun to fill in so that he no long resembled what others might call a ghost or apparition…and who had started screaming.

Sherlock threw his hands to his ears as well, the sound from Harry's mouth coming out in a horrifying manner and mixing in with something, like the clanking of machinery and the sound of an air raid drill.


	2. Listen, but Speak Not to 't

To say John was paranoid would have been a massive exaggeration. To say he was skittish and anti-social…well, that would be the exact truth.

John tried it at first. He tried to continue on as though nothing had happened, as though life was perfectly normal - like it might have been, had he never met Sherlock. He tried to pretend like there weren't hundreds of things he'd wanted to say to Sherlock before he died. Mycroft told John to move on and to continue living as though Sherlock had never existed, claiming that it was "what Sherlock would have wanted." John told him to piss off. It was the exact opposite of what Sherlock would have wanted.

But John tried it anyway, knowing it was completely useless. Every time he went to work he looked compulsively at his phone, awaiting a text that would never come. He stopped at crime scenes looking over the crowd until ordered to leave by gruff Yardies. He ignored calls from his therapist and his sister and avoided Mrs Hudson at all costs. He purposefully got himself in trouble for graffiti and fighting. Once, for setting a trash can full of unpaid-for newspapers and magazines on fire. Lestrade called him suicidal. Maybe he was, although John denied the accusation. It wasn't altogether wrong, but suicide wasn't something Sherlock would have wanted for him. _Even though he apparently wanted it for himself –_

"Shut up!" John shouted to nobody, and tugged at his hair while he continued walking and ignoring the empathetic looks he earned from the homeless lining the streets. They were all so used to him by now. Every once in a while, a new one would come and ask him who he'd lost, who did he think was talking to him?

John never watched where he was going because he didn't care where he ended up. He used the walking time to think about all of the things he should have said and all of the things he should have done, all of the things that would have made him cry if he'd been standing still.

Unfortunately, tonight would not be one of those calm nights left to introspection.

"Where are you going, John?" a sad and strained voice behind him asked.

"Leave me alone, Mary," John said. "I told you, I don't want to talk. I can't. I'm otherwise engaged." And after three months of Sherlock being dead, John had gone from 'I'm otherwise engaged' to just 'I'm engaged.' Sometimes the words 'to a man' followed, depending on the gender asking. It wasn't true, but it got people to leave him alone and was easier than explaining, 'I'm still mourning the death of my ridiculously bonkers and brilliant male flatmate who killed himself and made me watch and this has so impeded my life habits that everyone thinks I'm suicidal and hell I might as well be because what's the point in living now? and no, I'm not gay - why do you ask?' He couldn't lie to Mary, though. Even before Sherlock's death, Mary had told John to choose between herself and Sherlock. The outcome had not been to her liking.

But Mary put into place her perpetual frown and followed John anyway. "You're still wandering about in the dark, mourning the loss of some flatmate-" the word felt sour in her mouth "like his death was your fault?"

"It _is_ my fault," he corrected.

Mary shook her head in that especially patronizing way she had, letting auburn locks fall out of her ponytail and into her half-lidded eyes. She pitied him, and he hated her for it. "No it isn't, John. He was insane–"

John turned around and threw himself into Mary's face, teeth bared. He took hold of her shoulders and slammed her against a dirty, nearby wall, hoping she would become intimidated and finally leave him alone. She didn't. Her patronizing look only became a sad one and she tilted her head, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. For all that Mary's company had been a burden and a pain to John, the look in her eyes made him grieve for her, and he felt an enormous sense of guilt at her sickness. _I'm a doctor,_ he thought, _so why can't I save her?_ Perhaps he should have refrained from shouting at her. The reminder of her chronic illness sat on his shoulders and he had to bite back a sob. _I can't save anybody_

John forced his anger back up, not wanting to feel sympathy for anybody - least of all clean-cut Mary, who'd never had a care in the world. "His name," John spat. "Is Sherlock, and he isn't – wasn't – crazy. He is – he _was_ depressed, and I could have and should have saved him. I should have done something to help him. I should have seen it coming. I should have known." Though his face was now turned to the ground, John grit his teeth against the pain and images now attacking his mind: Sherlock falling, Sherlock trying desperately to convince John and himself that he lied, John's mind piecing the facts together far too late, Mrs Hudson not lying in a pool of her own blood, John calling Sherlock a machine, Sherlock lying to him, Sherlock trying to save him, Sherlock reaching out, Sherlock crying, the look on Sherlock's face as he fell shattering everything that was holding John up as he narrowly avoided falling to his knees by bracing himself with one hand on the rough brick wall.

"But what were you dying to save me from?" he asked the nonexistent figure. "Why couldn't you just tell me what was wrong?" _Fuck_. He was crying now. "Would you have stayed…if I had just asked you to?"

Mary reached out to cup John's shoulder and the gesture broke his reverie. He shrugged his shoulder out from under her pleading grasp. "Get off, and leave me alone," he begged, jerking the hood of his jacket up over his head and marching on in the other direction, the world getting darker and darker as John ignored the limp in his leg.


	3. She Has Deceived Her Father, and May Thee

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hadn't thought to note this sooner, but I should probably tell you from whence these titles came. They're all Shakespearean quotes, all tragedies.
> 
> "It is a Tale of Sound and Fury, Told by an Idiot, Signifying Nothing" is from Macbeth (Macbeth is talking to himself),  
> "Listen, But Speak Not to 't" is also from Macbeth (the witches are telling Macbeth not to attempt to speak to the apparitions)  
> and "She Has Deceived Her Father, and May Thee" is from Othello (Barbantio is warning Othello about Desdemona).
> 
> I also feel I aught to apologise for the short chapters; finals are coming up, and while I've had ideas I haven't as much time as I'd like to expand on them.

Sherlock pawed at his face in agitation until the screech of the siren was nothing more than a dissipating rhythm in the back of his head. He applied pressure to his eyeballs, John having once told him it helped with headaches – although Sherlock doubted the scientific accuracy of that statement.

A shadow fell over his closed eyes; _Thin. Medium height. Older. Woman._ He felt the question " _mummy_?" leave his lips without his permission. A dull blush alighted his cheeks. He was having a harder time keeping the sentiment in check now that he was utterly cut off from everything that made him who he was: the drugs, John, Yard, his coat, the work…

He noticed how scattered he was after his first turbulent week without nicotine patches, and every day since then had gotten worse. Sherlock was now becoming deliberately violent, even scaring himself as he smiled through each thorough bashing of Moriarty's men. He started to seriously consider if perhaps there was some truth in what Moriarty had said, about the two of them being the same. Sherlock shivered and spread his fingers on the floor. _Cold. Stone._ He moved his hands further down, stretching his fingers out. _Rough carpet._ His knuckles caressed something wooden on either side of him. _Benches?_ Sherlock lifted his chin to smell the air. _The burning spice of incense._

_I'm in a church._

When Sherlock opened his eyes, he was startled to see the womanly figure still hovering over him, despite her shadow having left his eyelids. He blinked slowly up at her – _large eyes, thin and overly-arched eyebrows, tossouled and greying hair, emaciated, large mouth_ …He had no idea what to make of her, other than that she was, perhaps, somebody's grandmother. She looked far too old to be a parent herself, although she was clearly attempting to make herself come across as parental.

"Are you looking for something, my son?" she asked, her voice calculated and cryptic.

Sherlock shook his curls out of the way of his eyes, sliding from a kneel into a crouch. His new companion's already exaggerated facial features expanded to take in the movements. "No, I just," Sherlock looked around, his surroundings confirming his suspicious: an old and drafty church, with waning candles, dusty floors, and a moldy altar. His mother used to force himself and Mycroft to attend services at a place just like this when they were much younger. And now, as he did then, Sherlock had no idea why he was there, or how he had gotten there to begin with. He could recall fidgeting – much as he did now – in uncomfortable clothing, Mycroft occasionally resting a hand on his thigh to calm his restless legs and gracing him with a smile of sympathy. Sherlock considered for a moment asking her what happened to Harry, but her mere presence made him feel uneasy.

The woman guided Sherlock to the pew in front of them, her hand on his arm stronger than he would have thought for someone so frail. "You seem lost," she repeated, head tilting. "What is it that you are looking for?" Sherlock shook his head again, all ability to speak abandoning him for the first time since he was twelve. An uncomfortable minute ticked by in which the woman continued to stare unblinkingly, and Sherlock uncharacteristically looked away. _Nervous_ , he thought. _She frightens me._

"I happen to be looking for someone. She looks a lot like you…thin, tall, pale, soft eyes," No one had ever called Sherlock's eyes soft, and the situation he was in was starting to remind him of the fairy tale in which a devious wolf awaited the perfect moment to pounce on and devour the vulnerable child. "And her hair, raven black like yours." Sherlock internally groaned at the purple prose, fear of what the woman might do to him if he verbalized his hatred for her speech winning out over his naturally abrasive behavior. The woman reached out to brush his hair back behind his ears, and had he not been so frozen to the spot, Sherlock might have flinched.

The woman started as though sensing his hesitation, and her eyes narrowed. She reached up to her neck, revealing a small ring on a chain. She took the ring off her necklace and handed it out to Sherlock. The ring was embellished with an ornate symbol. One Sherlock had seen before. If only he could remember...

"Take this," the woman ordered, and he lifted it gingerly from her hand. "It will be the key to the most important information you shall ever come to know."

Sherlock analysed the ring, marveling in its complete normalcy. And as though the woman's cryptic message weren't worthless and confusing enough, Sherlock found that when his voice returned and he looked up to question the mysterious woman, she had disappeared. But the horrible clanking noise had returned.


	4. My Fingers Itch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This time, the chapter title comes from Romeo & Juliet (Lord Capulet speaking to Juliet).

John let his feet slam the sidewalk as he walked, not caring about the pain searing up through his legs as the air turned colder. The sidewalk appeared to be getting darker as he traveled on, reaching out into the distance where it appeared to turn black. There were none of the many streetlights was on, and it was getting more and more difficult to see the space ahead of him. John tore through his pockets to find the collapsible torch, shaking the the object to rattle the batteries before flipping it on. A greyish snow had started falling from the sky, lingering on the ground for a short time before being blown away by the wind. None of it made any sense to John – it was relatively warm for a November night. But still, it served as a welcome distraction from the strangled voices clanking about in his head. Most of which, he had to admit, were Mary's.

There was a wailing howl coursing through the heavy air, and John took the sound with a freezing stab to his heart. For the first time since he was shot, John was afraid. Not for anybody else, but for himself. He was stuck to the spot, unable to even move a finger.

A horrid clanking noise began, like metal smacking repeatedly against other pieces of metal, or cogs in a machine that was stuck but trying to go forward by running back and lunging itself at the other gears, but failing every time.

He couldn't place when it happened, but John had started running, blindly, unable to tell if the sound was getting louder or softer; if he was going to his former right or his former left, back to where he had started or further into the darkness. John didn't care either, he was just trying to escape the noise. He wondered now if the noise was in his head. It was in the air he breathed in, the air he breathed out. It was in his bones, making his limp worse and yet driving him further forward. John ground his teeth as he ran, stopping short when a high, childish screech broke through the other noises.

A echoing voice in his head that sounded a lot like Sherlock's told John to run, to save himself; but John's bitter heart responded, "you didn't."

John ran toward the source of the screams: a thin young girl, ten years old if that, pale to a fault with short black hair was backing away from –

"…What the fuck is that?"

A blank form, vaguely in the shape of a human being, with numerous wraps over its body was looming over the girl. Two sockets missing eyeballs peeked out from under one of the gauze-like folds, and a dark shadow of sorts stained from underneath the space, wriggling along the cloth body and becoming more tangible, more damp, like inky veins. There was no reason for such a simple figure to be so bloody scary, but the screaming and the clanking and the lack of a weapon combined with this frightened little girl and the fact that this either was real or John was going crazy (neither of which was a particularly relieving thought at the moment) made the moment unbearable. Invading Afghanistan and chasing criminals across rooftops seemed like making tea and watching crap telly with Sherlock on one of his better days in comparison.

John shook his head and lunged for a steel pipe laying on the ground. He knew he must look ridiculous, batting at a eight foot monster with something so small and ineffective, but after bashing at where the creature's knees should have been, the thing ducked its head, allowing John a few more whacks before it was lying on the ground, John covered in its black blood. Although it was quite clearly dead, John took no chances and continued kicking it, seeing red as more of the thick black blood coated his shoes and dried like paint spatters.

John stopped when his foot started to ache, but he didn't drop the pipe. He was breathing heavily and feeling so much more alive than he ever had, the murky dream-like atmosphere dissipating with the loss of the clanking and the return of the snow. He felt awake.

John forced himself to sigh and begin breathing properly. "We should probably leave before that thing's friends come for us –" He started, but as he turned around he found that the girl had left his the area, a red radio dropped carelessly into her place.

John bent to pick up the radio, and static started to emit from it. The sudden sound clashed with the returned silence and John recoiled at first, afraid to touch the thing again. He waited a second, then relented. Attached to the radio was a note, written in loopy but elegant cursive, much like Sherlock's:

_'Might be useful.'_


	5. Laugh to Scorn the Power of Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And today's quote comes from _Macbeth_.

“So Mycroft, where’s Sherlock?”

Mycroft paused, knife in left hand, fork in right almost meeting his mouth. Lestrade continued chewing, intent gaze directed at Mycroft. Mycroft sighed, setting his utensils down gently. He folded his hands in front of his plate, intertwining his fingers before carefully pulling his elbows up to rest on the table, and setting his chin on them. “I’ve already had this little talk with John. Please, do not make me repeat those words to you, Gregory.” His moves were calculated when he picked up his knife and fork again, his mind buzzing but his façade remaining cool and detached.

Lestrade grunted and let his utensils fall down. Mycroft narrowed his eyes, watching as Lestrade leaned back, arms crossed, feet ambling to the table. _Petulance, then,_ Mycroft thought. “I know Sherlock’s not dead," Lestrade began. "You told me already – he’s too fond of himself to commit suicide.”

Mycroft paused, choosing his words carefully. He let his tongue caress the inside of his cheek, antagonizing a section he'd bitten in his sleep. Blood began to seep through the cut. “Evidently, Sherlock is – or rather was – fonder of John than he was of anyone, or anything, else. You heard the message he left on his phone, that conversation between himself and Moriarty. If you hold any love in your heart for my brother, yourself, John, or me, you will do and say nothing to spread the suspicion that my brother is alive.” Mycroft looked up at Greg through his eyelashes, his expression pleading and dangerous, seductive and scary.

Lestrade licked the inside of his mouth, running tongue over teeth. “Moriarty’s dead.” Not really a statement so much as a request for confirmation.

Mycroft’s jaw tightened visibly and Lestrade’s hand immediately flew to where his gun usually was – taken off and away for such a casual meeting with Mycroft; but if Mycroft was tense enough to let his exterior be effected, then danger was not only near but imminent, and far much more than either could handle.

“Moriarty is dead, yes,” Mycroft confirmed. “But Sebastian Moran is not."

Greg nodded in understand, and the two continued eating. Mycroft rubbed at his jaw. Hopefully now the constant grinding of his teeth in the middle of the night would stop. Yet Sherlock Holmes was still his brother, so he doubted it ever would.

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Sherlock observed the church from where he sat, hoping to find some sort of clue as to whom he had just met and what her possible motivations for such an anticlimactic meeting were; but the church was poorly lit with only one candelabra resting on the altar. He really couldn't see much of anything. There were some supplies sitting on the pew to his left ( _handgun bullets? ampules? 'beef jerky’? What on Earth would I use any of this for? And who left it here? Why was it brought out in the first place – there’s no storage, so where did they get this from?_ ), but nothing of immediate interest. Sherlock snorted in derision at the lack of help provided as he rose from his seat, approached the back of the church, and pushed the right double-door open.

The night was black. Not just dark, but bereft. He couldn't see his own hand when he stretched it out in front of him. It was as though anything beyond the church doors had simply ceased to exist. No streetlights were on, although Sherlock remembered the streets as being lined with them. Sherlock could no longer see the houses; they all must be dark. Long since abandoned, he’d be willing to bet, and no surprise as to why. A high howl that sound like the whine of a dying animal sounded some place in the distance, and Sherlock felt a shiver in his spine and a sick smile grace his face. It reminded him of the adventure at Baskerville, of John. _Finally, something exciting going on._

Sherlock let the church door fall closed behind him as he strode to the altar for the only available source of light. As soon as he lifted the candelabra was from its stand, the flames went out and darkness collapsed around him, suffocating him. _Loss of oxygen_ , he noted. _How odd._

The howl sounded again this time from just behind Sherlock’s right ear. He started, then froze for the fraction of a second before whipping around, attempting to hit the unseen potential attacker with the now unlit candelabra. His attack was met with empty air. Sherlock tried to feel the air around him, spreading his fingers and waving his arms, sensing his surroundings, but nothing outside of the intense asphyxiation was there. Sherlock smoothed his hand over the marble of the altar, searching the surface for a weapon or anything that could be used as such, but could feel nothing except the ritual covering. Sherlock's hand hit something wet and slightly sticky, and his stomach clenched. _Blood,_ he thought. His fingers traced the symbol, expecting it to form a pentacle. It didn't. From what he could tell it was a triangle encased in a circle, a sort of serpentine mark etched inside the triangle. Sherlock was rendered breathless. He'd read a lot about cults and had believed most religions to be nothing more than this. He'd laughed at their pathetic lives, ridiculous beliefs and even stranger sense of moral justice. But how could he laugh now, when they held the power?

A tight, stormy feeling in his abdomen told him the body-less attacker was prowling around him, circling him into the altar. That Sherlock was even willing to trust his instinct over the senses that told him nothing was there was horribly troubling, but Sherlock found he couldn’t control or calm down his own mind anymore. He had gone into fight, freeze or flight mode, and his body had chosen freeze. He felt rushed and disorganized, as though his mind palace had abruptly been flooded with that same emotion he’d felt at Baskerville. It water-logged his notes and shorted-out his hard drive. His computer was, like him, freezing and crashing, turning into the blue screen of death that immobilized him. When he felt what he assumed were claws made of ice picks at the back of his kneecaps, Sherlock could not contain the cry that exploded from his mouth. _Body on fire. Mind on fire. Heart on fire. Reaching combustion._

Sherlock began to crawl to the back to the doors of the church, staying as close to the pews as he could. The feeling of being circled-in rang up again, and Sherlock could feel tension in his calves and forearms. He could have cried when the unexpected fear hit him again, harassing his heart. Hanging onto him. Clinging him. Choking him. Sherlock found it hard to move forward with the candelabra still in hand. He felt the ice-pick claws on his back, and he bowed forward, mouth open in a noiseless gasp. Sherlock dug his fingers into the stone and carpet, attempting to drag himself, knees of lead, to the back door, pushing the useless candelabra forward with his head.

He could feel sweat pouring like spiders down the back of his neck, making his clothes stick to his armpits, and his nails bending due to the moisture and preventing him from moving up. He threw his arms out, attaching himself to the final pew and pulling himself up despite the circling feeling, ice-pick claws trying to pry his hands away from this solid ground. Sherlock felt around the seat of the pew, hoping to find and latch onto a handgun to match the bullets, but could find nothing. Instead, he threw the bullets forward in the hopes that he’d hit something, and nearly tripped over the candelabra before grabbing it on the way out, the flames jumping back as though they’d never left the moment he crossed the threshold.


	6. Put Out the Light, then Put Out the Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This quote is from the end of _Othello_ , moments before Othello murders Desdemona.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I'm a big music nerd, so if you want some suggestions for mood music, I have four fail-safe options here:
> 
> 1\. ["You're Not Here"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDCktKqHBGQ) from _Silent Hill 3_  
>  2\. ["When You're Gone"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-12u04eADNU) from _Silent Hill: Shattered Memories_  
>  3\. ["Always on My Mind"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztspD7xr97o) from _Silent Hill: Shattered Memories_  
>  4\. ["Auf Kurs"](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWEYnoYq-xs&ob=av2e) by Oomph
> 
> Enjoy!

Even with the help of the flashlight, John had no idea where he was going: everything looked the same. John was beginning to understand Sherlock’s hatred of suburbs and was beginning to sympathise. He stopped running and scanned the area with his flashlight.

Broken mailboxes. Cracked sidewalks. Rusty gates keeping in some sort of dilapidated child’s park. Streetlamps and stoplights turned off. Grey snow falling from the starless sky, despite the warm air. Or was this ash? This didn’t look like any part of London John had ever been to. He could still hear the diegetic noise of London, but as this section was devoid of traffic, pollution, any form of human life, John guessed it was coming from above and he had somehow managed to reach one of those cities of the underworld the telly was always going on about. No matter what direction John ran in, everything looked the same. He was completely trapped and beginning to panic. He was reminded far too much of Moriarty and his mind games.

John turned the flashlight off experimentally only to find it hadn’t been helping much anyway. John started up running forward again, torn between wanting to run into something and wanting to continue without interruption.

John stopped short and nearly tripped at the sound of buzzing. He turned to look behind him, half expecting a madman with a chainsaw to be chasing him down the road. A needle – no, that couldn’t possibly be a needle. A stinger? flew down, smacking John in the stomach and causing his abdomen to feel as though it was swelling. He looked up at what seemed to be – no, he didn’t know what it seemed to be because he’d never seen anything like it in his life – and he’d thought that impossible after living with Sherlock. The creature in the sky looked like something out of a bad horror film: a double-sided mosquito, perhaps? It was just hanging in the air, occasionally flipping over and looking vaguely like a pinwheel with malicious intent. The huge whatever-it-was backed up a bit, and John could have sworn it was looking at him.

John tried to back up, not realizing until then that the last attack had made him fall, scraping his hands and roughing up his bum. The backing up of his feet made John’s arms bend awkwardly until his shoulders were nearly popped out of their sockets. The pain of his head hitting the asphalt short-circuited John’s brain for a moment, and as he tried to remember what he was running from and trying to regain feeling in his wrists, the creature took this moment to attack.

Being stabbed in the stomach was every bit as uncomfortable as you might imagine it to be. John had experienced this before, and the result was a furious Sherlock who threatened to murder John’s attacker while breaking the man’s fingers without once blinking. This pain John was experiencing now was nothing at all like being stabbed. While the stab wound burned a bit from the impact, it hadn’t been all that deep and the blood coming out of his stomach cooled it and left John with an odd almost out-of-body feeling. This feeling was like having teeth pulled without Novocain and having the empty spaces filled with poison ivy. John wanted to scratch through his skin and pull out his entrails. 

But despite the pain, John didn’t scream. Couldn’t scream. He thought this very well could be the worst moment, physically, of his life – even worse than being shot, as now John was not begging God to let him live, despite his certainty that he was about to die. John didn’t really want to live. 

A few shots rang off and there was a disgusting squelch from above John. The bug-monster fell over, stinger breaking off still in John’s stomach. John heard heavy boots running toward him. The boots stomped on the monster, the skeleton caving in until the monster squealed no longer.

The last thing John heard before passing out was, “Oh God, you’re not Harry.”

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

John awoke sometimes later with a sore neck and bandaged wrists. The firey pain in his stomach had subsided and although he was now itchy all over, it was a dull itch John no longer wanted to take a knife to. There was a blonde police officer sitting in the corner of what John assumed was a diner. She was lounging on one of the stools at the bar, arms and ankles crossed. Her gun was sitting on the counter next to an opened medical kit.

“You ready to rise and shine, soldier?” John nodded and sat up slowly, pushing the hood of his jacket down. The cold air of the building hit John’s scalp and a throb knocked back. His hands were still sore to lean on. John looked at the police officer, trying to analyse her the way Sherlock might have. He didn’t see anything there.

“That thing that attacked me – what was that?” As he spoke, the woman stood up and headed for the edge of the counter. A red notebook sat there, looking relatively untouched.

“I’m Cybil, by the way. Cybil Bennett.” She looked as though she meant to hand John the notebook, but was holding back. John could sense the hesitancy, but not the reason why. "Who are you?”

Cybil asked her question carefully, John could tell. He could see her mentally searching the words to make sure they would not be misunderstood.

“I’m John Watson,” John replied. “Dr John Watson, and to be honest I’ve no bloody idea how I got here.”

Cybil nodded once, curtly, and opened the notebook, handing it to John. “It’s called a Pendulum, I guess, that thing that attacked you. I’m pretty sure that’s Harry’s handwriting – you haven’t seen him, have you?” John shook his head without looking up. The account in the notebook was short, describing a car crash, a missing girl named Cheryl, an attack of children resembling burlap sacks, and the attack upon harry by a pterodactyl after Cybil’s departure. “Well, let me know if you see him. He’s average height, glasses, brown hair, leather jacket. He’s got my gun – thank God I had a spare in my car – and is looking for his daughter Cheryl.”

John nodded and set the notebook down, sighing and letting his head lean back on the window. Cybil eyed him. “We can’t stay here for long, John. I need to find Harry and you need to find whomever you’re looking for.”

John grimaced as he used his hand on the back of the booth to prop himself up. He frowned in confusion at Cybil. “But I’m not looking for anyone. I told you, I don’t know how I got here.”

Cybil smiled sadly, loading her gun and dropping the unused packs of bullets into a small black knapsack. “Dr Watson, no one finds themselves in Silent Hill unless they’re looking, consciously or unconsciously, for someone.”


	7. Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair, Hover Through the Fog and Filthy Air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the incredibly late updating, and thank you so much for sticking with me! I love you all deeply and passionately, I hope you know. This chapter's title is, again, taken from Macbeth.

When Sherlock was still trying to live in a world without John, his dreams tortured him with the same hallucinations cocaine used to give him. Giant bats with tarantula bodies, breeding in street corners with pterodactyls; the world turning to rust and blood and grating; the screech of an air raid siren, like the one he’d heard when Harry mason started to convulse, invoking in him an earthquake of the mind; and an implacable man trudging through dirty streets, the burden of all his sins dragged behind him in the form of an exaggerated knife. But this time there were no drugs involved and the hallucinations weren’t going away. If anything, they were getting worse with time and Sherlock almost wished he had the drugs for a distraction now, especially as the flames in his body rose from his calves to his thighs, waist, pooling and stopping in his stomach as he ran until his gut clenched and he tripped to his knees, retching.

Sherlock wiped the dregs of the vomit from his face with the back of his hand, surveying the world before him. Sweat dripped from his forehead into his eyes, stinging the sore apexes. His pupils danced around as he searched frantically for a weapon. A trashcan to his left was on fire, the streetlights on the sidewalk cast the asphalt in a murky red that did nothing to quell his aching stomach, and he dry-heaved. Red eyes approached him from the unlighted beyond and he froze. These, he knew, were not human eyes.

Sherlock risked a glance to his right, and was rewarded with a tire iron lying next to an abandoned car, one of the windows shot out and the door hanging just barely open. Sherlock lunged for the tire iron as the creatures – dogs with skeletally thin bodies but large snouts, red eyes, and yellow fangs dripping with saliva – lunged for him. Sherlock slammed the first with the car door, unhinging it completely. The second dog, if it could even really be called such a thing, he hit with the bar, reveling in the crunching sound it made on impact. Sherlock laid a hand on the body of the car to steady himself but as he lifted himself to his feet was attacked again, the dog hitting his throat.

Sherlock panicked, flailing and nearly dropping his weapon. He managed to dig one of the four legs of the iron into the side of the dog currently attacking him, pushing the creature back enough to allow Sherlock room to escape. As he ran he tried not to look back and assess the situation, knowing it would only make the fear – that’s really the only word for it – rise up and take hold again, becoming debilitating instead of advantageous, but he caved. Both dogs were chasing him, the face of the first dog bashed in and an eye missing and some of the bones on the second dog poking out, jutting gruesomely out of his skin just above the start of his front right leg.

“Shit,” he hissed, and a cough threatened to rise in his throat.

He let his mind go blank as he ran, and noticed the growling of the dogs for the first time. The worst part of it was that the sounds weren’t unnatural the way he would have expected. They sounded nearly exactly like the imitations of whimpering that John often did when imitating the bull pup he’d kept as a child. There was something sad about the sound that made Sherlock’s heart wrench. _The things are in pain_ he thought, and checked back once more to see that the dogs were both, indeed, bleeding. The second dog, with the bone breaking through the molted flesh, was limping and noticeably farther behind his face-battered companion. Sherlock expected the dog to continue chasing him, but after being alerted to his mate’s pain (through an eerie howl on the now-dying dog’s part), he stopped and retreated to his friend. But Sherlock did not let the opportunity go unnoticed, and instead of stopping to breath, zigzagged through the yards, launching himself over fences until he reached an unlocked house and threw himself into it, locking and bolting the door and collapsing to the ground.

X-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-X

John and Cybil managed to make their way, cautiously and very slowly, to an old and worn-down hospital. The sign on the marquee read Alchemilla ( _al-kem-ee-uh, or al-kem-ill-uh?_ he wondered), but aside from the ambulance sitting, almost as an afterthought, in a broken-from-impact hospital window, it seemed as though no one had entered the building in at least fifteen years. Cybil held her gun out in front of her with her left hand, her right hand holding a flashlight and balanced on the top of the gun. She walked in an eternal protective stance, and John could only wonder at what she might have seen out her to make her so paranoid. But if what he’d seen so far had been any indication, he could hardly blame her.

He’d been thinking about what she said to him. _No one finds themselves in Silent Hill unless they’re looking, consciously or unconsciously, for someone_. “What did you mean?” he asked.

Without turning to look at him, Cybil replied. “I haven’t met very many people during my travels through here, John, but from what I can gather, everyone who has been drawn here has undergone some sort of traumatic abandonment. Legend has it one guy came here looking for his dead wife. Well, not only was she dead, but he killed her!” Cybil snorted. “Smothered her to death, said she was sick. I think _he’s_ the one who was sick, if you catch my drift.”

“But I’m not looking for anybody. I’m really, really not” John replied.

Cybil shrugged. “I got a friend working a in prison a few counties over. She says during a transport the bust broke down, and some sorry prisoner found himself running amok in the town. He’s trying to avenge the abuse and death of his kid, she says. That’s a kind of looking – looking for the murderer, looking for his kid, for closure.”

John remained silent for a moment as Cybil checked the dumpsters lining the outside of the building, looking for any signs of life.

“A friend of mine died, recently,” John offered. “Could that be it?”

Cybil turned to look at him, expression softening. “How did he die?”

John took a deep breath, letting it out through his nose. “Suicide.”

“Were you close?”

“Very.”

Cybil sighed and turned away from him. “Perhaps he’s not as dead as you thought,” she suggested, but the slump of her shoulders didn’t encourage John very much.

Cybil slammed into the locked hospital doors a few times, and for a few minutes John was too lost in thought to respond to her ministrations ( _Could Sherlock really still be alive? Is that why I’m in Silent Hill? Did he seek refuge here? What is he hiding from?_ ), but when she managed to force the door John looked up, puzzled. “Why didn’t we just go through the broken window?”

Cybil blinked in confusion, and John nodded to the crashed ambulance. Cybil grimaced. “I don’t know, but it’s a little late for that now.”

John shrugged, not really caring and trying not to question Cybil’s judgment on the safety of the hospital. And really, it was the strangest hospital he’d ever been in.

Instead of nice carpeted floors in the lobby or solid and sturdy floors in the hallway, rusted (or were they bloody?) grating graced the surface beneath John’s feet. Wallpaper was wearing and stripping off the walls. Stretchers lined the already narrow walkway, and a small television blared in the background, emitting static.

After checking all immediate hiding spots for attackers, Cybil lowered her guard a bit. “Find a map,” she barked at John. John resented being told what to do, especially now that the orders were not coming from Sherlock (and not that he even always followed them then – he was not and is not a doormat, after all), but if they were to avoid getting lost the map probably was a necessity.

As John plucked the map from the wall, unpinning it from the nearby corkboard, he heard the sound of clanking metal. His ears perked up and he turned to Cybil, similarly frozen to the spot. “That sounded like an IV hitting the floor,” he told her, and she nodded. “Shall we go…Check it out?”

Cybil nodded numbly, her hands finding her gun and raising it again, this time forgoing the flashlight. John walked up to her, map in hand, and slowly dislodged the torch from loop in her belt, and nodded to her. “On three,” she commanded, and John nodded again. “One… two… three.”

John kicked in the first door to their left, ducking down in case Cybil needed to shoot. But the room was empty, nothing even slightly useful lining the storage shelves. They meandered down the hallway a little further, and came to a stop at a second door. “On three again?” John asked, and Cybil nodded.

One, two, three.

John’s foot hit the door and propelled him backwards, landing on his already bruised bum. Cybil relaxed her guarded stance and nudged the lock. “Broken, from the sounds of it,” she announced as John groused and patted himself down.

“I say one more high-alert break in and then we give it a rest, just open the doors like normal people, yeah?”

Cybil smirked, but nodded. John took his place by the door, this time resting his hand on the knob in order to open the door more successfully.

“One,” Cybil whispered, but she didn’t get to finish her counting. The door flew open of its own accord and a young man, perhaps about twenty, with short brown hair, an army jacket and dog tags stepped out, his hands flying in the air at the sight of Cybil holding a gun on him.

“Jesus, Cybil, you scared me half to death. Could you put that thing down, please?” he asked.

Cybil sighed and swore under her breath, but lowered her gun back into its holster anyway.

“Who’s the newbie?” the man asked, looking John over. Although he knew he wasn't being judged, the man's army attire prompted John to stand up a little straighter, hold his head up and throw his shoulders back. Standing at attention, the way he did to pull rank a few years ago at Baskerville, but without the salute. The man took notice of John's effort, and nodded to him.

Cybil flipped her fringe out of the way, huffing. “Alex Shepherd, I’d like you to meet John Watson. Alex is looking for his brother,” she explained, “and John’s looking for his flatmate.”


	8. Art Thou Not, Fatal Vision, Sensible to Feeling, as to Sight?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today's quote is brought to you by: _Macbeth_.

"Flatmate, or, uh,  _roommate_?" Alex asked, nervously rubbing the back of his head. "Not that it matters -"

"Then why are you asking?" Cybil asked sharply. Her blonde hair had started to fall in her eyes and stick to her forehead, although John couldn't understand why. It wasn't as though the room or, really, the hospital in general was all that warm. So why was Cybil sweating? "And don't run off again, Alex," she admonished, emphasizing her point by waving her torch, which had previously been aimed at the shelves in an attempt to find something useful, at Alex.

Alex put a hand out to steady Cybil as she wobbled on one foot, her lack of balance pushing her into the wall. Alex lowered his dark eyebrows as his brown-grey eyes quickly flicked over Cybil's form, checking herskin for signs of bites or scratches. "Cybil," he began evenly, trying not to alarm her, "are you okay?"

"Who, me?" Cybil had started shaking. "Yeah, of course, totally fi-" her words were cut off with a violent cough, blood mixed with mucus splattering her gloved hand. Alex backed away as Cybil outstretched her hand. "Guys," her voice was now laced with alarm, "Guys, what's happening?!"

Alex maintained eye contact with her, but continued to back away, his hand sneaking to the shelf behind him, looking for something to use as a weapon.

Cybil turned to John, becoming more frantic by the second. Her eyes were echoing her internal hysteria. "John!" she shouted, "John, you're a doctor - help me!"

Alex turned to John, surprised mixed into his cold mask. "Is that true?"

"Yes," John nodded, "I am - well, I  _was_  an army doctor, but it's been years since -"

"And you haven't forgotten any of your training," Alex urged. "What's wrong with -" And Alex, too, broke into a series as coughs. John could now see that Alex had also started shaking and sweating, his hair which seemed to naturally stand on end falling limp and damp. John stepped toward him uncertainly, placing his right hand on Alex's forehead. Alex tried to bat the hand away, but John had already felt it. "Shit," he hissed. He turne dto walk to Cybil, feeling for her temperature too. She took her hands from his face as he felt her, but when John tilted his head up to meet her, his vision fell on blind eyes that made him vomit bile into his mouth. "Oh, God," he swallowed.

"What?" Cybil shouted in a panic. "John? What is it? What's wrong?" she asked, but John couldn't find the words to explain the situation to her. Blood was trickling down from Cybil's scalp, stopping to pool into her bottom eyelids. It was a little hard to tell, but he thought her eyes might be bleeding too. Lines of blood ran down her cheeks like tears, skimming over her lips and filling in the creases and lines in her face where dimples used to be. John himself was panicking, but his military training had taken over and he straightened himself, clenching his hands into fists and setting his jawn and throwing his shoulders back.

"Right," he said. "We've got to get some medical supplies. This is a hospital, so we should have no issue with finding at least some gauze. Alex -" but when John turned to give Alex his orders, he found that the young man was in no better a state than Cybil. If anything his condition was worse; he was covered in fresh blood from head to toe. John could tell he was breathing quickly, even though he was standing perfectly still, as if at attention. Alex did not even try to open his eyes or his mouth.

John nodded to himself, making up his mind. "Right," he said and, grabbing both Cybil and Alex by the hand, launched the three of them out of the door.

But when he exited, he was stopped into shock by two things. The first was that this did not in the least resemble the hospital they'd walked into a half-hour ago. For one, the soothing grey walls with black-and-white photos of flowers and other pleasant things like puppies and children had turned into a rough and broken grating, coated in rust (or blood, but John was trying not to think about the latter right now). When John looked down, he found the floor was made of a mixture of that same grating and flimsy metal sheets, like the kind used to make air vents. The scenery was still changing before his eyes, the normal-to-nightmare transformation skittering across his plane of sight like spiders, leaving an uneasy clicking sound ringing in his ears.

The second, more immediate aspect that somehow both stopped him in his tracks and heightened the need to run, were the howling dog-like creatures with zebra stripes and split heads. They had dropped their attention from a shared piece of meat (which looked,  _dear God_ , like one of their own) and turned to the newcomers the minute John had oppened the door. There was no dramatic moment wherein the beasts and John engaged in a stare down or sized each other up. They couldn't have done, as John soon realized that these zebra-dogs didn't have eyes.

"Oh,  _God_ " John whispered.

"What is it?" Cybil shouted, not realizing John was right next to her.

"Nothing," he snapped. "Just run!"

With both Cybil and Alex treading behind him as he pulled them along by the hand, he understood some of the exhileration Sherlock must have felt when dragging him along the streets on that awful night while they were being chased by Lestrade and his men. He shouldn't have been enjoying this, the run for his life and the lives of his two companions, but he felt himself smiling anyway. he didn't even know where he was going, throwing every door they encountered open. Everything looked different in the change of scenery, and yet every room looked the same as the last one. After awhile John felt as though they'd been coing up in floors despite the lack of stairs. The panic he'd felt was just starting to subside and the howling starting to quiet when it stopped all at once and a strangled whimpering began. John, Cybil, and Alex slowed down to a stop, gasping for air, and John tried the doors in front of them.  _Locked_.

"John," Alex asked in regard to the growing whimpering, "What is that?" His voice was harsh and rasping, as thought he'd been screaming for a long time and lost his voice by virtue of over-exhaustion.

"I have no idea," John attmited, listening intensely as static reputed over Alex's radio. John heard a thumping coming toward them, saw the doorfram shaking, but didn't see the actual monster until it was close enough to touch. It blended in well with their surroundings. It was big and dripping everywhere. It was a weird, dark red colour and emitting shallow breathes as ti wheezed. John might have found the sound and look of the blob-like silhouette ridiculously funny at any time other than this. It appeared as though this monster, like the split-headed dogs, had no eyes. Really, the monster appeared not to have any facial features at all.

But then it opened up its mouth. A few seconds of sticky white substance tumbling from its mouth was the only warning John recieved before the thing let out a high-pitched scream. The noise it made sounded like a hoover or a hair dryer - which, again, might have been funny on another day. Now, though, it seemed as though the noise was intent on murdering John's eardrums. John threw his hands to his ears to try to dull the sound a bit if not mute it entirely, but it had very litle effect. He even closed his eyes, knowing it wasn't going to help. He crouched down in pain, nearly falling to his knees.

"John?" Cybil cried, hands finding John's left shoulder as he crouched further down, falling to his knees. "John! John, are you hurt?"

"The noise!" John shouted above the din. He knew he should probably explain what the noise was doing to him, but the words weren't coming out. It was as though language was being erased from his tongue and thoughts from his mind. It wasn't that the things in John's brain were getting jumbled; they were simply disappearing, as though they'd never existed in the first place. Wiped not only from John's mind and mouth but from the surface of the planet, and quite possibly deeper than that too. 

"John!" Alex shouted. "John, can you hear me?"

_A guy. A man's voice. John, is that my name?_

"John, there's no noise. You just collapsed, but we need to get out of here."

_That makes... What just happened? What did he say? The whole world's lost meaning._

Alex felt under John's arms and hauled him up by the armpits, huffing slightly. Cybil placed her hands on John's back, half holding onto him and half pushing him forward. John managed to find and open a door to his immediate right and get the whole party through before the sound of metall cutting through air crashed above their heads, piercing the new silence of this open space. Nobody waited to regain their sense, but ran forward into what felt like an elevator. All three of them began to push and stab wildly at the wall, hoping to find a button to take them away. Alex swore as he attack something plastic that caved beneath his fingers and the elevator groaned up to meet them. As soon as the ding cued the opening of the doors, John pushed Cybil in and was pushed in himself by Alex.

John's impending headache dissolved once in the elevator, tugging Alex through with him. He saw the blood draining off of Cybil's body, and turned in time to see a long knife sliding through the closing doors, hitting the side of Alex's head. Cybil shrieked and leapt into action, pushing in the button that would take them far away from whatever level they were currently on. As the doors closed with finality and the elevator started to sink, the creature wielding the knife screeched and dropped it, and Alex passed out at John's feet.


	9. Too Early Seen Unknown, and Known too Late!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> from _Romeon & Juliet_, said by Juliet about Romeo.
> 
> I want to apologize for the serious lack of updates as well as the short chapter. I've been bereft of time as well as ideas, so if you've any suggestions for _any_ of my fics, please let me know! If you don't want to post them here, you can send them as an ask to crissandrist.tumblr.com
> 
> Thank you for your patience!

When Sherlock finally awoke, it was to a dull headache, the sad sound of a slow drizzle, and an impossibly patient presence looming somewhere above him. He knew it couldn't possibly have been John, but he wanted to labour under the illusion of such for as long as he was able to. Because that was really all he'd wanted to do, for the past several months: lay on the floor, with his eyes closed, pretending John was watching over him. Sherlock took a deep breath, exhaling loudly through his nose.

 

"I know it's real peaceful and all, but you can't lay around all day. I'm not even sure how safe this house is."

 

Sherlock blinked awake, maintaining a passive facade as he tried to make out some sort of information about the man through the ringing in his ears. "American?" Sherlock asked, making no attempt to sit up. The man crowded behind him, lifting Sherlock's shoulders gently and pushing him into a sitting position. Sherlock could smell a fading scent of gasoline and stale potato chips. The man wasn't unclean, necessarily, but probably had some sort of stationary job that didn't leave him with a lot of time for things like regular food (John would have had a fit). The gasoline smell seemed to permanently scar the man's hands and clothes - something that required a lot of travel, then.

 

"Yeah," the man answered. "Not from around here, though. You don't seem to be either." Sherlock turned as he stood to face this new comrade. The man was tall, nearly his height, clad in flannel, jeans, and a baseball cap. He had some scruff for a beard and looked as though he hadn't slept in days. His eyes were drooping and his hands, although calloused from previous work, sported new blisters. He stuck his hand out straight in front of him, offering the hand for Sherlock to shake. "Travis Grady," the man said.

 

Sherlock shivered internally before remembering that he didn't have the luxury of being snobbish here. This was the third person he'd encountered since entering this town, and as of yet Travis appeared to be the only sane one. Sherlock fixed his clothes out of habit before extending his own hand. "Sherlock Holmes." Travis's hand was warm and his shake was strong. It was a short shake, and Travis's eyes left Sherlock's to peer out of the window. A hunting rifle of some sort was resting against the wood of the windowpane. 

 

"Does that work?" Sherlock asked. Travis turned to the rifle and grimaced.

 

"For awhile, I guess," he said. "I haven't had much luck with any weapons here. They seem to work for a couple hits, then just break apart on me. I dunno," Travis tossed the gun to Sherlock. "Maybe you'll have more luck with it."

 

Sherlock caught the weapon with ease, but didn't really like the feel of it in his hands. John was much more adept with weaponry than he was. When and if Sherlock felt the need to instill physical violence on another person, he preferred to work with his hands - much more personal. But all in all, he preferred to leave that sort of work to Lestrade or John. He didn't care about apprehending criminals as much as he did deducing them, knowing who they were and figuring out motives. That's why Moriarty was such a challenge - untouchable in part because he  _had_  no motive.

 

"You know how to work that?" Travis asked, and it occurred to Sherlock that he'd been staring off into space again. John understood that this meant Sherlock was thinking, and would go about his own business as Sherlock paused. Other people generally took it as a sign that something was amiss.

 

"Yes. My partner is much more fond of these than I am, however." Sherlock grit his teeth in preparation of the questions about his supposed sexual orientation and relationship with John. But the comments didn't come. Travis simply nodded and returned to his thoughtful gaze through the window.

 

"We gotta move quickly. Just 'cause the world's gone back to normal don't mean it won't change again soon. I haven't figured out a timeline yet, but the changes occur within at least thirty minutes of each other, and you were sleepin' for ten." Travis turned to Sherlock. "You think you can run? Not feelin' too shaky, are you?"

 

Sherlock nodded. "I should be fine. I do this all the time anyway... where I come from." Travis nodded in response and clomped in his heavy boots to the kitchen, tugging a knife from the first drawer next to the fridge. He bumped the drawer closed with his hip, and picked up a key from the counter. He walked up to Sherlock, the key outstretched. "I found the key to the house in your hands, I just washed off the blood. I got a spare key from the doghouse in the yard - Or at least, I guess that thing's a doghouse, I didn't see any dogs." Travis indicated for Sherlock to follow him out into the back yard, where the sky began to darken and the wind whipped around them. It might not have been that darkened Otherside Sherlock encountered before he passed out, but the place was still eerie.

 

"If we get separated for whatever reason, we'll meet back here. I've got some medical kits stacked up in the cupboards under the sink, and ampules in the fridge if you really need 'em. We gotta save those, though; they're hard to come by." Travis looked at Sherlock with a hard-set determination, and Sherlock was surprised to find that he already trusted this stranger. Perhaps something about this town made him more willing to bend his rules. After all, if he couldn't trust the one sane man he'd met, would he even be able to survive? The thought made him feel weak, but despite his vulnerability he nodded in agreement. This was not the time to be having a crisis of self. 

 

"Good," Travis said, and opened up the fence that lead onto a street of abandoned cars.


	10. What a Piece of Work is a Man, How Noble in Reason, How Infinite in Faculties, in Form and Moving How Express and Admirable, in Moving How Like an Angel, in Apprehension How Like a God!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today's quote is brought to you by _Hamlet_. And again, if you have any puzzle ideas and would like to share them, I will love you forever.

Together, John and Cybil managed to drag Alex's body to a (thankfully empty) examination room. John checked Alex's pulse, the injury on his head, and his eyes before letting himself breathe easy. "Just knocked out, thank God."

Cybil snorted. "Don't thank God yet, you haven't met her." John looked at her quizzically, but Cybil tried to brush it off. "It would take too long to explain, but Harry and I had a - well, a run-in, I guess you might call it - with her. She's not exactly the kind, forgiving entity we were all raised to believe in. But then again," Cybil sighed, kicking a stool over to sit on, "How great could a god from a place like this be?"

John shook his head in agreement. He licked his lips, trying to figure out the best way to get Cybil to agree to his idea. They only had a limited supply of bullets, but the great knife the creature dropped in the elevator as it left the floor looked nice and sharp. Cybil wouldn't be keen on letting John wander out on his own, since she'd already lost track of Harry. Telling her he was leaving rather than asking for permission was probably the best way to get what he was after, so John turned to Cybil and said, quite plainly, "I'm heading back to the elevator to pick up that knife."

"No," Cybil countered, jaw set. "It's too dangerous, John. What'll you do if the sirens go off again? Have you got your gun? Any ammunition?"

"No, I haven't got any sort of weapon. We dropped all our stuff back in that blood room. That's why I need to go back for that knife." The two glared at one another before Cybil finally gave in, shoulders sagging a bit.

"Alright. But I expect you back here in five minute, soldier. Don't make me coming looking for you." John nodded once before turning the knob and heading out.

The hallway already looked different than when the three had first arrived on this level. The distinct red tinting was gone and all the rust was cleared. While the hospital still gave the distinct impression of a building long abandoned, it now appeared to have suffered a mass fire followed by a major flood to consme whatever remnants were left behind. John shined his pocket torch along the walls in search of a map. He never did find one, but there was plenty of both useless and useful information. For one, he learned that the hospital was (supposedly) undergoing renevations that rendered the third floor out of bounds. There were notes about where the keys to various storage closets were, and John quickly pocketed the notes for later deliberation with Cybil and Alex. There were also messages scrawled in some sort of red liquid - blood? ketchup? lipstick? paint? - that appeared to be code for something else, but John wasn't sure what. Still, he copied _Amy, 31_ and _4694_ down onto the back of one of the other notices. He didn't bother with the warnings about violent patients or ads for new vaccines - he doubted either would be necessary at this point.

John wished he'd thought to put on a watch before he left this morning, and then laughed at himself. What did it say about his life with Sherlock that this nightmare in which he was currently ensconced didn't seem so weird at all? Most people wouldn't still be capable of rational thought, let alone a sane one. And yet here stood Captain John Hamish Watson, medical doctor, regretting his decision to forgo a watch. What had the world come to?

When John finally forced himself to focus and made his way to the elevator, he found that pushing the button no longer worked. Frustrated, he looked around for something with which to jimmy open the doors. He huffed out a lungful of air before setting down the flashlight in order to use both hands. Despite all the strength he put into pushing and pulling at the doors, they would not give.

"Need help with that?" a voice behind him asked. John froze, hoping that if he simply ignored the voice, it would go away. The voice heaved an all-too-familiar sigh. "Oh come on, don't just ignore me like that. I'm trying to be nice." John dreaded the clicking of heels as the disembodied walked closer to him, reached his shoulder, and was now standing in front of him to reveal -

"You're not Mary," John clarified, because although the woman sounded like Mary and bared quite a striking resemblance, there was no way the stranger before him was her. Her blonde hair was streaked with bright pink hilights and she wore a red, cropped shirt that only barely covered her bra. Mary normally wore modest clothing - plain dresses with cardigans, her dirty-blonde hair pulled up into a ponytail. This woman who stood before him now was taller than John, though not so much as Sherlock. She worse a short, pink, leather-printed skirt, black boots and, most noticeably, had a butterfly tattooed on her right hip. The first thought that occurred to John was that she looked like some sort of stripper or prostitute - not that it was his right to judge, but he wondered what in the Hell she was doing in a place like this. 

The woman put two painted hands on her hips. "No, I'm Maria. What?" She asked, placing her hands on her head and striking a pose, "Do I look like your girlfriend?"

"Not exactly, no," John said. "You uh - where did you come from?" Maria gesticulated to a set of double doors at the other end of the hall. John could only barely make the doors out, as the hall in front of the door was littered with recently-used gourneys. John flashed the lights back to his new companion. "Alright, yes. I could use a little help."

Maria shook her head as she reached for the left door, John favouring the right. "And here I thought big, brave men like you were supposed to be strong." John snorted.

"Yeah, well, so much for that theory."

With Maria's help, John managed to work the door open. John expected the floor to be bloody, but the sheer amount of blood in the elevator was ridiculous. There was way too much to have belonged to Alex alone. His head wound simply hadn't been that severe. John tried to ignore the way the hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he reached for the long knife.

The knife was much heavier than he was expecting. True, its length was about his own height, but he hadn't taken the weight of the metal into account. He groaned as he tried to drag it upward, and wound up backing out of the elevator, pulling the knife along in front of him. Maria raised an eyebrow as John tried to swing it at a locked door. The strength of the blow was powerful, but the aim was uncontrolled and the door got away with only a scratch. John swore under his breath. "How does that monster even lift this thing?"

Maria blinked at him. "What monster?"

"Dunno," John said. "I didn't see the whole of him, just this knife. It's heavy as Hell though, and all the monsters I've seen so far just look frail in comparison."

"What monsters are you talking about? I haven't seen anybody around here, just you."

John rolled his shoulders back, preparing to take a swing at Maria. "That's not possible. They've been crawling all over this place."

"Don't hit me, John," Maria whispered. The change in her overall demeanour was instant. The fire in her voice had vanished and the confidence had disappeared from her body, as though it was never there. John had to fight back the instinct to protect and shelter her.

"How do you know my name?" John asked cooly.

"John," Maria sobbed. "John, it's me. It's Mary - oh God, don't hurt me, please!"

"You are not Mary!" John shouted. "Who in the Hell are you?"

"Please, no, don't hurt me!" she cried, and over her pleas John heard the screaming of a siren and a scraping along the floor. John turned just in time to see a massive figure, clad in a bizarre sort of work apron and a triangular metal helmet lift his knife - a knife identical to the one in John's hands - above his head. 

John felt his mouth drop as he backed up. Without thinking, He lifted and swung his knife in turn, raising it high enough and just in time to block the Pyramid Head's hit. His thrust didn't have enough drive behind it, however, and the knife flew out of his hands and across the deserted hallway. John backed up until he hit Maria. "Run!" He yelled, grabbing her hand and sprinting down the hallway.

Maria dropped his hand as she tripped into one of the gourneys. John turned back, but she managed to correct herself and shouted for him to continue running. He did so, and without hesitation. When he reached the end of the hall he found tha the double-doors were chained together and turned to see Pyramid Head advancing on him. "Left!" he shouted to Maria, and they went down the hall, feeling for unlocked doors as they ran. 

They finally reached the end of the hall, but the elevator refused to come when John called it. Desperately, he threw himself at another locked door, this one with a keypad.

"Do you know the code?" Maria asked, and John shook his head. He started to press random buttons in random orders, hoping he'd eventually hit the right combination by accident. But Pyramid Head was catching up on them, and Maria was sobbing once again. "Oh, God," she pleaded, "I don't want to die here!"

There was a pause, and everything went silent. Distracted, both John and Maria both turned to where Pyramid Head was massaging what John supposed was his forehead. A humanoid being that lacked a face but wore a nurse's uniform had been hiding in an unlit corner and stumbled out in front of the bigger monster. The nurse, with its awkward and belaboured walking, tried to back away. John could see from its shaking that their friend with the pyramid head was not just a torment to humans, but a source of fear in the other monsters as well. The Pyramid Head stopped to consider his comrade before swiping his sword upward, the point of the knife reaching up the nurse's skirt and flinging her against the door so that she lay not dead but twitching and bloody against a locked door.

Maria let out an ungodly screech. "Get the damn door open, John!" 

"I'm trying," John was surprised to feel tears staining his cheek - or were those spatters of blood? "Trust me, I'm trying!"

Then John remembered a sequence of four digits that he'd found on the bulliten board. They probably weren't the right ones, because that seemed just all too easy, but he'd rather die trying than give up. Now, what were they?

"Four six, four nine!" John shouted, entering in the digits. Even with the green button lit up, the door was heavy and John only barely got it open. He extended a hand for Maria, but as she took it she flinched and went limp. Pyramid Head had stabbed her through the stomach and was dragging her, head first, back down the hall.


End file.
